What Is Web-Populism Doing to Italian Politics? the Discursive Construction of ‘Grillini’ Vis-À-Vis the Antagonist Other

MEDIA@LSE MSc Dissertation Series Compiled by Dr. Bart Cammaerts, Dr. Nick Anstead and Ruth Garland What is Web-populism doing to Italian Politics? The Discursive Construction of ‘Grillini’ vis-à-vis the Antagonist Other Isadora Arredondo, MSc in Politics and Communications Other dissertations of the series are available online here: http://www.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/research/mediaWorkingPapers /ElectronicMScDissertationSeries.aspx Dissertation submitted to the Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science, August 2013, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the MSc in Media, Communication and Development. Supervised by Dr Ella McPherson The Author can be contacted at: [email protected] Published by Media@LSE, London School of Economics and Political Science ("LSE"), Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE. The LSE is a School of the University of London. It is a Charity and is incorporated in England as a company limited by guarantee under the Companies Act (Reg number 70527). Copyright in editorial matter, LSE © 2014 Copyright, Isadora Arredondo © 2014. The authors have asserted their moral rights. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher nor be issued to the public or circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published. In the interests of providing a free flow of debate, views expressed in this dissertation are not necessarily those of the compilers or the LSE. MSc Dissertation of Isadora Arredondo What is Web-populism doing to Italian Politics? The Discursive Construction of ‘Grillini’ vis-à-vis the Antagonist Other Isadora Arredondo ABSTRACT In the year of 2009 comedian and blogger Piero ‘Beppe’ Grillo and social media guru Gianroberto Casaleggio launched ‘Movimento 5 Stelle’ (5 Star Movement,) a political party that within the span of three years would become the biggest anti-establishment force in Europe. From the outset, the movement has evoked both criticism and praise amongst political communications scholars. Most of the backlash is centred on the movement’s anti- establishment rhetoric, its lack of a consistent political agenda and most prominently, the controversial nature of the main head; Beppe Grillo. Most of these remarks have been unsuccessful in grasping the movement’s position in the political landscape for they have quickly dismissed its democratic potential by deeming it anti-political. Conversely, the celebratory interpretations surrounding the 5SM phenomenon have focused on the leaders’ ability to create a mass support base primarily through the use of the Web, but equally in combination with traditional rallying strategies; all of this whilst bypassing traditional institutions. Therefore, what seems to baffle analysts is the communicational strategy he employs from a technical point of view, rather than a discursive one. As a result, both kinds of assessments run short of critical strategies to analyse the movement’s differentia specifica within the current Italian context. This paper conducts a Discourse Theory analysis of the rhetoric used by Beppe Grillo in constructing ‘the people’ (i.e. the movement’s followers, also known as ‘Grillini’) vis-à-vis the antagonist other. Drawing on competing models of public sphere theory and merging it conceptually with the literature on populism, this paper asks how Grillo’s discourse on internet politics has managed to interpellate new political subjects and create new social spaces to guide social action in a stage where traditional media seem to be undergoing a crisis of legitimation. Nonetheless, whilst this project supports the idea that a central dimension to his rhetoric is his ability to revive the political, it rejects the notion that the articulation of a zero-sum war against mass media will lead towards a proactive form of civic engagement. - 2 - MSc Dissertation of Isadora Arredondo Instead, this paper urges for more research to be conducted on how a counter-discursive dimension can be theoretically and practically implemented within traditional institutions’ frameworks so as to recuperate what seems to be a seemingly quiescent citizenry. - 3 - MSc Dissertation of Isadora Arredondo INTRODUCTION Given the ubiquity of mass media in contemporary capitalist societies, it is now deemed a truism in academic circles to claim that they constitute the main sites through which the nurturing of social power is enacted. This observation stems from the idea that their deontological role in society grants them the authority to institutionalize common sense and thus normalize a particular social structure (see Ives 2004, Myles, 2010). Arguably, the present symbolic regime which upholds Western societies is mainly sustained through the overall consensus that “liberal democracy represents the objective order” (Mouffe, 2000: 18). In this line of thought, any material and or discursive dislocation of the edifice through which this shared understanding runs, inevitably results in a temporary dissolution of its figurative totality and legitimacy as a political model. Crucially, as representative institutions increasingly unveil their failure to represent the ‘common’ they are meant to embody, the voices that have been excluded from their agenda have started seeking for new outlets to express their marginalization. This instability is said to be exasperated when new channels for dialogue open up the possibility for new struggles to emerge and thus compete to institute a new hegemonic order. Particularly amongst social movement and media and communication scholars, the idea of a rise of an ‘Information society’ is met with optimism as it leads to the claim that societies are being progressively organized around ‘networks’ and ‘multitudes,’ therefore weakening old centres of power (see Castells 2009, Hardt et al., 2005). In this terrain, the success of any given political actor(s) will depend primarily on his/her ability to claim to represent what is shown to be absent and mobilize groups through such framework. Nevertheless, this paper will from the outset align itself with thinkers such as Chantal Mouffe (2005) and reject the premise that the ‘progressive’ side of modernity coupled with the rapid development of communication technologies has led to new forms of identity politics that will challenge the need for traditional institutions or political alignments (for an overview of these claims see Giddens 1991, Beck et al 1994). Rather, the ideas put forward in this work will advocate for what scholars of agonistic democracy have called a ‘radicalization of the public sphere’ (Licoln, 2007,) which as it will be argued, may help us endow traditional institutions with their democratic role in a state where they are thought to be losing their legitimacy. An attempt to navigate these theoretical tenets will be made by employing Ernesto Laclau’s and Chantal Mouffe’s ‘Discourse Theory’ method to the case study of the Italian protest party ‘5 Star Movement’ (hereinafter referred to as 5SM). The motivations behind this undertaking are two-fold. First of all, Italy is an emblematic case of a Western democracy whose - 4 - MSc Dissertation of Isadora Arredondo exacerbating political crisis goes hand in hand with the constitution of its media ecology. For many years now, substantial academic research has been dedicated to understanding how a developed, liberal capitalist society can thrive in an environment where information is tightly in the hands of small political and economic elite (see Ricolfi, 1997, Statham 1996). Simultaneously, it presents us with another recent case of a European country having to allocate a strong political force of populist character in its parliamentary system. Evidently, this has been met with concern by the political class insofar as the leader’s rhetoric is instilled with a high anti-establishment sentiment and his leadership has already led to several political disagreements, including parliamentary deadlock in the 2013 elections (Hooper, 2013). Lastly, the 5SM’s communication strategy has gained academic appraisal amongst political communication scholars, as ‘Beppe’ Grillo (the head of the movement) and his social-media guru partner Gianroberto Casaleggio have not only been able to mobilize actors by bypassing mass media; but they have also “incorporated the internet into their very notion of democracy” (Bordignon et al., 2012: 1) Moreover, as a study from British think-tank Demos found that the so-called ‘Grillini’ (the movement’s members) come from all sides of the political spectrum, they are mostly young, educated and most of them are ‘first-timers’ in politics (Bartlett et al., 2013) Therefore, the success of the 5SM may serve to refute the notion that the seemingly apathetic and sceptic Italian citizenry can no longer be mobilized towards collective action, but instead illustrates that they require a figure who offers alternative articulations of politics. Hence, by analysing the performative dimension of Beppe Grillo’s rhetoric, the aim of this project is to empirically assess how he interpellates new political agents through the discursive construction of ‘the people’ vis-à-vis the antagonist ‘Other.’ In so doing, this project will seek to understand the “social spaces and subjectivities going under his form of address” (Glasson, 2012: 101) and contextualize them within the present situation of Italian politics.

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